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Hello and welcome to the Lateral Analysis section of our Rotor Dynamics Blog Series! If you haven’t had a look at the other entries in this series, you can find them here: Series Preface
We’ve finally made it to the analysis part of the rotor dynamics and bearing analysis intro series! Let’s get into it, this blog will have a lot to cover!
Rockets have always fascinated us and to this day a rocket launch is still a global news event worth watching. The sheer noise, power and sight after you hear that “…3-2-1, Lift off!” leave us in awe. A masterpiece of engineering, the recent historic manned SpaceX Falcon 9 launch was no exception. Or was it?
The beginnings
From the outside, a rocket does not look especially advanced – a mere ‘stick’ with a big flame shooting out at one end. The principal concept is simple, too, but the inner workings of a modern liquid-fuel rocket are highly complex.
The first rockets are believed to have existed in China, around 1200. The invention of gunpowder was crucial to the development of these primitive rockets, which were fireworks initially and then weapons. Multistage so-called ‘fire arrows’ were documented during the early Ming Dynasty (Figure 1). The designs were based on bamboo sticks – still a little way off a Falcon 9.
With the rise of gunpowder, this crude rocket technology spread throughout the Middle East and Europe.
The next rocketry milestone came in the 1780s, when the Indian military developed Mysorean rockets with iron castings and successfully deployed them against the British East India Company. Read More
Update – February 28, 2023: AxCYCLE and AxSTREAM NET are our legacy software packages which have been merged into AxSTREAM System Simulation.
Ground source heat pumps (GSHP) are one of the fastest growing applications of renewable energy in the world, with annual increase of 10% in about 30 countries over the past 15 years. Its main advantage is that it uses normal ground or ground water temperatures to provide heating, cooling and domestic hot water for residential and commercial buildings. GSHP’s are proving to be one of the most reliable and cost-effective heating/cooling systems that are currently available on the market and have the potential of becoming the heating system of choice to many future consumers, because of its capacity for providing a variety of services such as heat generation, hot water, humidity control, and air cooling. Additionally, they have the potential to reduce primary energy consumption, and subsequently provide lower carbon emissions, as well as operate more quietly and have a longer life span than traditional HVAC systems. The costs associated with GSHP systems are gradually decreasing every year due to successive technological improvements, which makes them more appealing to new consumers.
The basic purpose of a GSHP is to transfer heat from the ground (or a body of water) to the inside of a building. The heat pump’s process can be reversed, in which case it will extract heat from the building and release it into the ground. Thus, the ground is the main heat source and sink. During winter, the ground will provide the heat whereas in the summer it will absorb the heat.
A GSHP comes in two basic configurations: ground-coupled (closed-loop) and groundwater (open loop) systems, which are installed horizontally and vertically, or in wells and lakes. The type chosen depends upon various factors such as the soil and rock type at the installation, the heating and cooling load required, the land available as well as the availability of a water well, or the feasibility of creating one. Figure 1 shows the diagrams of these systems.
In the ground-coupled system (Figure 1a), a closed loop of pipe, placed either horizontally (1 to 2 m deep) or vertically (50 to 100 m deep), is placed in the ground and a water-antifreeze solution is circulated through the plastic pipes to either collect heat from the ground in the winter or reject heat to the ground in the summer. The open loop system (Figure 1b), runs groundwater or lake water directly in the heat exchanger and then discharges it into another well, stream, lake, or on the ground depending upon local laws. Between the two, ground-coupled (closed loop) GSHP’s are more popular because they are very adaptable. Read More
Landspeeders belong to the “repulsorlift” transport class, like the podracers we looked at last year, and travel above a world’s surface (up to 2 meters) without contact (very useful on swampy lands like Dagobah). Landspeeders are the successors to the hanno speeder which was mainly used as a racing vehicle with many Tatooine natives still using them to race in the Boona Eve Classic today.
Landspeeders are found in both civilian and military applications but due to intergalactic ITAR regulations we will only cover the civil aspect here with a focus on the most famous of them all. If you want to know more about our experience working with military, defense and governmental organizations (whether you area part of the Empire, Rebels, Resistance or Separatists) feel free to contact us.
The Famous X-34
Luke Skywalker’s X-34, with its 6 selectable hover heights, features an engine consisting of 3 air-cooled thrust gas turbines able to reach a top speed of about 155 mph. The side engines are also used for steering although it is not obvious whether this steering is achieved by varying their thrust to be asymmetric or through vectoring of their exhaust. With the X-34 total length being 3.4 meters it helps us estimate the overall dimensions of its engines which are, each, roughly 80 cm long by 30 cm wide. Read More
Hello! Or should I say, welcome aboard! In this edition of micro gas turbines in transportation, we’re going to be looking at micro gas turbines in the marine world. Marine transportation presents its own set of unique challenges not seen in other forms of transportation; although some of the common challenges and hurdles will be seen here too. If you haven’t read the other entries, or the introduction, I highly recommend you do so here.
Out of all the different vehicles and forms of transportation that will be covered in this series, the boat as we know it is one of the oldest ways of getting about. From rowing to sailing to paddle wheels and engines, the boat has a long history of carrying every kind of good and being imaginable. Much like the topic of turbines, marine transportation can take up oceans of information; in fact you might say that it’s a whale of a topic.
This blog will specifically cover a brief history of motorized marine transportation, where/how micro turbines can be used, and the inherent advantages and disadvantages. Let’s get started!
A Brief History of Engines in Marine Transportation
Steamboats became popular in the 19th Century when the Industrial Revolution was in its early stages. Steam engines like the ones designed by James Watt were used to propel everything from small riverboats like the ones that went up and down the Missouri river, to oceangoing steamships. The engines typically drove a propeller or “screw” or a large paddle wheel like what is commonly seen on a watermill. Different steam engines in different configurations dominated marine transportation throughout the 19th century, and by the turn of the 20th century, large expansion engines began to be utilized for oceangoing ships like the Olympic-class ocean liners as well as warships. Read More
Update – February 28, 2023: AxCYCLE and AxSTREAM NET are our legacy software packages depreciated by AxSTREAM System Simulation. System Simulation was born out of the union of the legacy AxCYCLE and AxSTREAM NET.
Mechanical engineering is an ever-changing field, and we want to be there to help engineers stay ahead of the curve, even while they are flattening it. In that spirit, we wanted to share with you our different training options that are available now. Whether you are looking to brush up on the fundamentals, or evaluate a software platform, this is a great time to train and explore the latest and greatest in turbomachinery engineering.
Without further ado, let’s get into it!
Private Corporate Trainings Online
First and foremost, the best most comprehensive training you can get from SoftInWay is a private session with one of SoftInWay’s lead engineers and your team. Why is this the best training option? A couple of reasons:
Courses are entirely customizable: The scope of these private training courses is tailored to your specific needs. Are you looking to learn the fundamentals? Or perhaps you want to expand your team’s R&D capabilities when it comes to turbomachinery, rotor dynamics, and 1D thermal systems? Whatever the application, we’ll work with you to develop a course curriculum which brings the most value to you and your team.
One-on-one consultation with our expert engineers on individual projects and challenges. Our engineering expertise ranges from flowpath design on a turbomachine, to rotor dynamics, as well as secondary flows/multiphase flows, and other all-encompassing projects such as liquid rocket engine design.
ll registrants get a 1-month license of the relevant AxSTREAM modules. During the class, users will be familiarized with the ins and outs of AxSTREAM, and be able to make use of AxSTREAM’s capabilities for 1 month afterwards.
The class can be as long or as short as you need and scheduled around you and your team. Read More
Update – March 1, 2023: AxSTREAM NET is our legacy software depreciated by AxSTREAM System Simulation. System Simulation was born out of the union of the legacy AxCYCLE and AxSTREAM NET software packages.
Turbine components are placed right after the combustor and are therefore, subject to the highest temperatures in an engine. The turbine blades are directly in the line of fire (so to speak) of these incredibly high temperatures. Higher temperatures yield higher cycle efficiencies, meaning that the limit on efficiency for a cycle is determined by turbine materials. The current state of the art materials can only give so much heat resistance capacity, which makes blade cooling essential. In this post we’ll be taking a look at the various cooling methods that exist for turbine blades, and the tools to design them.
How important is cooling to the efficiency of gas turbine engines?
In a word, very. Let’s look at an example to better explain. Our fictitious engine without cooling has an overall pressure ratio of 40 where the maximum allowable turbine entry temperature (TET) is at 1498 K, yielding a thermal efficiency of 33%. When compared to a turbine with cooling, TET can be increased to 1850 K, yielding a thermal efficiency of 38%. This is an 8% increase in efficiency via the addition of cooling. In order to achieve good thermal efficiency in our cycles, turbine components must be cooled!
Hello and welcome to the latest revolution in our series on rotor dynamics and bearing analysis. This month, we’ll be looking at the importance and procedure of modeling the bearings and structural supports in a rotortrain. If you haven’t had a look at the other entries in this series, you can find them here: Series Preface
So let’s get started, one of the first things a rotor bearing system needs aside from a rotor, is, well, bearings! But what are bearings? I’m glad you asked!
Bearings are mechanical components used to restrict the motion of the machine and support the load while protecting other elements by reducing friction between moving parts. In fact, you might even say it bears the loads (axial and/or radial) caused by a rotor.
Bearings come in different materials, shapes and styles depending on their application, and can be found in everything from turbomachinery to reciprocating engines to things like hard drives and even fidget spinners. But what are the bearings commonly encountered in turbomachinery, and what effects can they have on the machines they are used in? Read More
Hello! Welcome to this edition of our series on micro turbines! Today we’ll be covering micro turbines and the roles they play in the automotive world.
“Big wheels keep on turnin’…”
Now here’s the real question, when you see that lyric which song do you think of first? Having gotten that stuck in everyone’s head, let’s get on with today’s topic: micro turbines in cars.
I mentioned in the intro to the series that when I think of micro turbines my mind immediately jumps to turbochargers like those used in reciprocating engines seen in cars, trucks, boats, and small airplanes.
They are, in essence, the same, but also different. For example, a turbocharger uses exhaust gas from a reciprocating engine to drive a compressor to pull more air into the engine, while a micro turbine drives a compressor to pull air into a combustor and then also drives a generator to create electric power.
Hello and welcome to the latest revolution in our series on rotor dynamics and bearing analysis. This month, we’ll be looking at what steps need to be taken to accurately model a rotor train, from the components on the rotors themselves to the bearings and structural components that support the entire machine. If you haven’t had a look at the other entries in this series, you can find them here: Series Preface
So what is the importance of accurately modeling a rotor-bearing system? Well we already know that an inaccurate analysis can have catastrophic consequences… If you want to know more about why, I also suggest looking at entry 2, titled “Why is Rotor Dynamics so Important?”.
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